User blog:John Pan/B-29 Lightning
B-29 Lightning Yea, though I fly through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing. -Inscription on the gate of Kadena AFB. It used to operate SR-71s. Seeing how B-2 Spirits could come under serious trouble because of its sluggish speed, the NAU rushed a next-generation bomber that would be fast, stealthy and deadly. They came up with an SR-72 with bombs. And the B-29 designation is a tribute to the Superfortress. Empty Weight: 80,000kg Loaded Weight: 180,000kg Maximum Takeoff Weight: 200,000kg Crew Composition *Pilot *Co-pilot *Engineer Everyone is housed in the B-29's cockpit/escape pod, so no ejection seats. Sensory The B-29 Lightning relies on GPS and a small nose-mounted PESA to get around. Upgrades None. Armament Three internal bomb bays, carries 34,000kg of ordinance. General Purpose Strike Package For GP Strikes, the Lightning carries a bunch of GPS-guided bombs that it simply scatters from over 100,000 feet. GBU-39 (144) Carpet-bombing is very effective—even more so if each individual bomb has its own complete guidance system. And thanks to GPS, it's completely viable. Up to144 targets can be eliminated per pass, making it very effective against masses of ground targets. Anti-Ship Package To make sure no enemy (surface) ship makes to anywhere alive, the B-29 can load its bomb bay full of massive AGM-54 HSSWs. AGM-54 (2) The end product of the X-51 WaveRider program, the AGM-54 is a massive (7m-long, 10-ton) hypersonic anti-ship missile. The missile is equipped with a GPS-assisted ECCM-equipped active radar homing seeker. Thanks to its robust SCRamjet engine, it can deliver its massive 350kg blast-fragmentation warhead on an enemy ship 1000km away—at Mach 6. To survive CIWS fire, it gets a hardened steel case capable of deflecting shrapnel. Bunker-busting Package To simply eradicate enemy bunkers (and the valuable personnel and/or material that they protect), the B-29 can fill up its bomb bay with MOPs. GBU-57 (2) The Massive Ordinance Penetrator is a 14-ton bunker-buster. Guided by a GPS and equipped with a void-sensing fuse, the MOP is able to deliver 2400kg of HE to a bunker over 60m deep. Upgrades Mk.84 (24) Without the need for rockets to achieve standoff, the Lightning can simply dump good-old Mk.84 2000lb LJDAMs out the bomb bay—24 of them. Replaces the GBU-39s, giving it way more firepower per target, but can only hit less than one third of the original number of targets. GBU-57C Instead of delivering 2400kg of HE, why not replace some—say, 400 kilograms—of the HE and replace it with something much more damaging underground—say, fire? The MOP's main HE warhead gets a ring of napalm, allowing it to not only blow half the bunker to pieces, but to burn through whatever survived as well. Replaces the original MOPs. Protection The B-29 gets its own Magnetic Shields—the bomber's own aurora borealis and immunity to space weather (bombardment by cosmic rays). Temperature-resistant stretching low-reflection composites (no, it still reflects visible light) are used to form the aircraft's skin. Finally, active cooling is used to cool off the plane's leading-edges. In terms of stealth, the B-29's shape and skin make it a grain of sand to a radar, and although its exhaust passes through treating ceramic plating to cool it off, it is still very, very visible. Ultra-high powered ECM systems that jam the X-band is given to the B-29 to avoid SAM fire—although what non-ABM can effectively target a rapidly-moving target almost 40km in the sky? And what ABM is designed to fire on a missile-evading object not dumbly following a set trajectory? Upgrades None. Mobility The B-29 is powered by four SCIMITAR-M engines, the only aircraft in the world that uses dual-mode hydrogen-powered SCRamjet engines. One engine by itself can generate 176,000 Newtons of thrust. Therefore the Mirage can use a maximum of 704kN of thrust and can cruise though the air at Mach 5 at over 30 kilometers in the sky. Upgrades None. Category:Blog posts